The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott Page 4

  "And you didn't?"

  David shrugged. "Oh, I did, most aspects of it. While it lasted.”

  "You said you. . . reached bottom, though. How was that even possible? Clinical depression, do you mean?"

  "I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything really wrong with my life." Not in visible wavelengths, anyway. "I could even have kept working, doing something, if not building spectrometers or spin-casting telescope mirrors." He paused. "Do you remember April Ellis?"

  "Sure, she was on an imaging team I consulted at Keck, and had a hand in setting the parameters for the New Horizons survey on Kitt Peak, too. She's at LBT now, I heard. Smart lady."

  "Pretty, too."

  After a moment of silence, David turned to see that Doug's jaw had gone askew, his tongue moving along the backside of his upper teeth. Finally, he said, "She kinda resembles someone, now that I think of it. You don't. . . have romantic inclinations, do you?"

  David returned to the couch, sat, and leaned forward. An odd sudden pressure behind his eyes. He closed them, then rubbed them, taking in and letting out a deep breath. "Not anymore."

  "You'll get over your loss, David, trust me."

  "I don't know what’s wrong with me."

  "Sure you do. Isn’t it obvious? But hey, the past is past. Look on the bright side. You don’t have money worries, like everyone else. Not with that patent you got. No debts, no. . ."

  "No," he agreed, “I guess you’re right.”

  Perhaps sensing the need for a change of subject, Doug finally coaxed from him sentiments about the American dream shifting overseas while its source dissolved into illusion. He said something, in reply, about reaching for dwindling fruit, as though in the Garden of Eden. What he didn’t say was what he couldn’t. Like how much was really left for someone who’d saved both money and time all his adult life, out of fear. Indicating the photographs he'd been examining, Doug changed the subject again by asking, "Did you notice that there's no photos of his family over there? His mother, his father?"

  "No, I didn’t."

  "Oh, right. I forgot. Both your parents are. . ." Etherton paused. "I mean it's odd, isn't it, his fascination with solar astronomy? Like the sun is his father now, and he's on this elliptical orbit, feeling mostly distant, yet constantly pulled back by his father's influence."

  "Right," David said. Remembering some of the nights he'd stared up at the sky, he felt a hint of the same inexplicable emptiness, the dwarfing vastness. He opened his mouth, hoping to explain the real reason for his retirement, his near suicide, but the words still weren’t there yet. The silence was eclipsed by an explosion in the distance, which sounded like the rumble of thunder, except there were no clouds anymore, he knew. It was a clear night, full of relatively close or otherwise high magnitude stars.

  Etherton rushed to the window to confirm the worst. "Oh my God," he said, staring, "it really wasn’t an accident, after all."

  7

  At dawn, as they both stared up at the overhead television monitor from Nasheed's entertainment pit, the screen displayed a close-up of the smoke still rising from a hole blasted out across three floors in the side of the new Dynamic Tower. Panic had replaced fury and chagrin, as the reported body count stood at seven, although judging by the public flight away from city center, a tourist might have guessed seven hundred. When a news anchor claimed one of the damaged floors was still turning, David confirmed the assertion from the window, utilizing the tripod-mounted refractor still positioned there. Only a thin wisp of gray vapor still rose from the Burj Khalifa, he saw, but the Dynamic Tower was partly obscured by it, and any residents within two miles of the building were either on the move, stuck in traffic, or long gone.

  "Sure enough, the Pentagon's disavowing any complicity," Doug announced after flipping through channels with his hand held remote. "President is due for a comment shortly, once the CIA has prepped him."

  David noticed that a beer had somehow magically sprouted from Doug's free hand. "Or dressed him, you mean," he said.

  "What's that?"

  Turning back to the scope, David looked through the eyepiece once more. There were no survivors waving rags from broken windows, or preparing to jump from the roof. No flames that he could see, either. The upper floor of those three affected had once again rotated away from the other two, and smoke had begun to dissipate, spreading out across a wider area. Despite himself, he tracked the scope to the left, and then to the right, half expecting to witness another pilotless drone vectoring in on another landmark.

  "Why are we doing this?" he asked.

  "We?" Doug said. "I don't think it's us, my friend. Although Al-Jazeera certainly does."

  "Who, then? And why?"

  "If I had to guess? Somebody who's got it in for billionaires having fun while the rest of the world can't pay their mortgages or fill their gas tanks."

  "Not al-Qaeda?"

  "With stolen U.S. military craft? Not likely. Dubai is a free zone used by a lot of western corporations, it's true, but al-Qaeda also gets financed by money coming through here, too."

  "What about revenge from someone State-side?"

  "For nine-eleven, or those cargo bombs that shipped though Dubai? That's a stretch. Could figure into it, though, as motive. Along with anger about oil prices and partnerships. What I can't figure is means and opportunity. How would an American terrorist cell, if there is such a thing operating here. . . how could they pull this off? And where would they be staging this from? The Empty Quarter? Because--"

  "Are we safe here?" David interrupted.

  Doug hit the Mute button on his remote. "Say again."

  "Shouldn't we be leaving too?"

  At this, Doug tilted the beer to his lips, considering it. "No, we'll be okay," he concluded. "There's at least two dozen more strategic hits to be made, if they have the birds to do it. Besides, it's gridlock out there."

  "But it's Friday. I thought. . ."

  "What? Hey, all bets are off, buddy, if you're going to believe what they're saying on TV."

  "What are they saying?"

  "Well, you said it, too. Sunday it'll be nine-eleven again. Only Sheik Mohammed isn’t talking. He’s got some military adviser as a mouthpiece."

  Host: "Please, your Excellency, do you wish to ask anything of the American President?"

  Emir: "Only that he end this outrage immediately!"

  Host: "Thank you, your Excellency. And what would you ask of the citizens of Dubai?"

  Emir: "That they return to their homes and their lives, Allah be praised."

  Host: "Thank you. Is there any other matter you wish to discuss?"

  An amateur video of the Dynamic Tower crash was shown next, taken from a distance of about a mile and a half. Chillingly, the nearly silent drone aircraft had first drawn the attention of the cam-toting tourist when it appeared almost directly overhead, side-lit by reflection and flying right past the Burj Khalifa, over the fronting lake, at a height of roughly four hundred feet. Imaging on the night video became less sharp as a zoom lens was deployed in tracking the drone to its target. But then, upon impact, a pressure wave could be seen rippling outward across the buckling glass of the illuminated building an instant before a fireball filled the frame with its exploded shower of debris. A moment later the sound wave arrived at the camera, echoing like a sonic boom.

  "Holy horsehead," Doug said.

  Next up, the building's own video surveillance camera revealed the same impact, but with clearer and more dramatic focus, the angle taken from the roof, aiming down to the courtyard below. The nose of the drone was shown penetrating the glass in slow motion, deforming it and the framing steel around it an instant before detonation. Then even the camera shook with the blast, and went dark.

  After the videos were repeated three times in succession, with a voiceover commentary about the CIA's hopeful use of this visual evidence in retracing the flight path and identifying the drone's origin of manufacture, Doug cut off the TV. Next he picked up his cell p
hone and called Nasheed, only reaching his answering machine. "Can't take any more of this," he confessed, at last. "Going stir crazy. How about a little sightseeing drive?"

  David considered the other option--that of waiting for the sky to fall, cooped up with the same doom and gloom he'd come here to escape. "I'm ready if you are," he said, at last.

  ~ * ~

  They took the elevator down to the parking garage, reclaimed the Jaguar, and soon edged out of the building into Baniyas Road, expecting gridlock at the nearest intersection. But the streets were oddly quiet now. So much so that Etherton laughed. "Never seen it like this before, old man," Doug said, and roared ahead to beat the traffic light. "Even on a Ramadan Friday."

  On their way to Jumeirah Beach, they searched for a talk radio station, settling on Dubai Eye, 103.8 FM. Although he wanted to close his eyes for needed sleep, maybe even to drift off, sunken down into the Jag's plush leather cushioning, David was kept awake, not just by the talk show host and Etherton's newly exuberant driving---as though he'd just won the car in a lottery---but also by the most delicious eye candy he'd ever seen. Despite news helicopters, the skyline was ravishing.

  "Oops," Doug interrupted his reverie, turning away from a police checkpoint on the Business Bay loop. "I know a shortcut."

  As they roared for the beach, occasionally passing a Maserati or Porsche out for a typical high speed joy ride, the CNN-styled Dubai Eye host came up with a surprise---a news flash factoid gleaned, no doubt, from the wire services and presented as though just heard from Allah's lips in an octave too high for the competition to plagiarize:

  Host: "Mark Swann wasn’t the only casualty at the target

  condo. Mrs. Dorothea Swann, wife of real estate mogul

  Gregg Swann, was apparently also in residence, awaiting

  the return of her husband from a hunting safari in Kenya."

  Etherton pulled over next to a public park. Then he rolled to a stop, a look of puzzlement plying the shadows on his face. But as the Burj Al-Arab came into view, though, David was diverted, and got out of the car to walk rapidly to the right, toward a spot that afforded a better view.

  "Wait! What--"

  David stared at what he remembered had been described as the most stunning hotel on Earth, the massive sail-like structure rising from its ocean platform base as the first signature symbol of the city's unique architecture.

  "Wait up!" Doug admonished from behind him, but he didn't stop until a hand landed on his shoulder and turned him around. "What's the matter with you?"

  David hooked a thumb. "There are cocktails at the restaurant atop that hotel that cost two thousand dollars each," he said, with almost the same sense of awe he'd once experienced helping to measure the red shift of a gravitationally lensed quasar.

  "Probably half that price these days, buddy, but still out of your budget unless you also bought BP stock after their Gulf of Mexico spill," Doug quipped.

  David turned to gaze again at the Burj Al-Arab. "First time Ted Cashman came here, though, that's where he stayed. . . praise the Lord, and pass the bucket." He smiled. "I should be angry. I was angry."

  "And now you're just obsessed?"

  "No. Curious. And I want to meet them. Cashman and Innes."

  "Really? Why? And why not P. Diddy and Kanye West and whatever members of the Trump family are in town?"

  "Them too."

  Doug came around to stand in front of him, looking into his eyes like a doctor might. "You okay?"

  "Better."

  "You keep saying that, although it doesn't sound like you heard the news."

  "What news is that?"

  "About Swann's family. Because now I might be able to swing Gregg Swann for you, if not the others. Since Nasheed knows him, and since his family just died. And because we'll be going to the funeral."

  "We will? Why is that?"

  "I have questions, for one thing."

  "So do they, apparently," David said.

  "Who?" Doug asked.

  He motioned one final time in the direction of the Burj Al-Arab, where two police officers now approached them on foot, walking briskly across the park--one of them with hand raised, the other with a hand on his holstered pistol.

  8

  The interrogation room he was hustled into resembled an upscale lavatory, complete with tiled floors and walls, a toilet stall, sink, and a suspiciously inset mirror too large for its usual purpose. The only thing out of place was the metal table and chairs.

  When the door finally opened, after ten minutes’ silence, an Arab man in a white cotton shirt bearing a Dubai Police detective I.D. tag came in with a manila folder, and sat opposite him. The man had a neatly trimmed goatee, appeared to be in his mid thirties, and possessed wide-set but piercing brown eyes, and a predilection for slow, deliberate movements. After silently reading the two sheets of paper the file contained, he looked up, directly into David's own eyes.

  "You are an engineer from Arizona," he said, speaking perfect English, but betraying no hint of direction or judgment.

  "Yes," David confirmed, giving nothing back. "What's this about?"

  "This?"

  "Yes. This." David offered one open, upraised palm.

  The man nodded, then looked back down at his thin file. "It says. . .here. . . you are an optics engineer."

  "Was. I'm on vacation now."

  "In the company of your friend, Dr. Etherton?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you tell me why you evaded a police check point?"

  "Ask Doug, he was driving."

  "We are."

  He felt a slight shiver at the man's emphasis of the word are, but hoped it didn't show. "Just sight-seeing is all, not looking for trouble."

  The man's eyes narrowed for a second, then he propped up his chin with one hand, the forefinger pointing toward his temple. "Are you aware the city is under siege by American military aircraft?"

  He wondered whether he should laugh or not. "Has that been established?"

  A pause, then a pulling back. "What do you think, Mr. Leiter? After all, you are an expert, no? You own the patent on an imaging device used by your military, do you not? A device that could be used on a UAV or unmanned aerial vehicle."

  He licked unusually dry lips, for which there was no reason except that he might be dealing with people who knew nothing of reason. "I don't know what to think. I haven't really thought about it."

  A slow blink. "And you were going where?"

  "Again, you'll have to ask Doug. I'm just along for the ride."

  The man rose, took his file, and without another word left the room. David tried the door after a moment, but found it locked. Half an hour later it opened again. This time the detective carried only his passport.

  "Before we let you go," he said, "can you tell us why you chose Dubai to vacation?"

  David looked closely into the man's eyes. Something new was there, sure enough. Something which made him hold onto the passport instead of extending it prior to a response. He imagined being in the detective's place, looking at this tourist known to be an engineer, and wondering if there was some connection to a terrorist crime requiring specialized expertise in various fields of engineering, including optical imaging and targeting. Was it possible that David Leiter was CIA, or a private soldier of fortune assisting a clandestine operation?

  Before we let you go, the man had said.

  David glanced over at the long mirror over the sink. Had he been filmed, and his voice tested for stress? Had they needed half an hour to analyze or to run the film through known channels? Or was he just being paranoid again?

  Guessing that a simple Google search might have extracted his blog from some secondary source, David confessed, "I've always been fascinated with the city, ever since a televangelist named Ted Cashman moved here to escape scrutiny by his detractors."

  "Detractors. Like you?"

  "I once wrote a blog about him, among others, yes."

  "Gregg Swann?"

 
"No, I don't know about Swann, and like I said, my blog is history. I've moved on."

  The detective stared at the ceiling for a moment. "All the same, Mr. Leiter, I hope you won't mind if I hold onto your passport for a few days." He held up the little blue book as though daring him to take it.

  "What will I use as identification, then?" David asked.

  "Your driver's license will do. If not, you can have them call me."

  With this, the detective withdrew a business card from his pocket, and like a magic trick handed that over instead, pocketing the passport as his next official act.

  Noting the name, David said, "Anything you say, Mister. . ."

  "Muaz Salik."

  ~ * ~

  He rejoined Etherton in the lobby, but they didn't speak until outside and walking toward a parking garage festooned with concrete pillars and directional signs in Arabic.

  "Guess I shouldn't have taken that shortcut," Doug lamented. "Sorry about that." Glancing at a Rolex, his friend added, "Almost lunchtime. Let me make it up to you. Fancy a steak? Sushi?"

  David grabbed his forearm for a second. "Doesn't it bother you, what just happened in there?"

  "They're just being paranoid. It's what cops do when their city is bombed." He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. This isn't Saudi Arabia. We'll get our passports back."

  “Although two of the nine-eleven conspirators were from the UAE?”

  They drove to the beach, beside the Burj Al-Arab, where Doug wondered aloud if it was even open to non-guests on Friday. At first David figured Etherton was antsy about the probable lunch tab at the world's only seven star hotel, but when Doug settled instead on the Epic Cafe inside the Trump International Hotel and Tower, newly opened on the trunk of the Palm Islands, he decided money had been little consideration after all.

  The Epic's floor was marble, the tables glass. Blue sectional curtains divided tall, narrow tinted windows that held intermittent views of the Arabian Sea beyond. David ordered a Mahi sandwich, then tilted his head, shifting his eyes toward an unusual couple seated at the end of the long, ebony bar. The man there was late sixties, ruggedly handsome, with dark gray hair and beard. He wore a tailored black sport coat with a white shirt, open at the collar. A red handkerchief barely protruded from his lapel pocket, and square silver cufflinks adorned his protruding sleeves. His female partner was also Caucasian, but early thirties, tall, gorgeous, with short brown hair and the perfect skin of a model. They both sat at an angle, partly facing each other, but occasionally making eye contact with a passing guest.